Family Man

To say contradictions disprove the bible is to overstate the case. There are many times in history where we have contradictory accounts; for example, Caesar's death. We don't necessarily just throw up our hands and walk away. I'm not saying that contradictions have no effect on historical judgements, but they are not the be all and end all. Manwithdream is correct when he notes that it is possible that one of the scenarios really did happen. Matthew's account, for example, is plausible.

No, I'm not saying that I believe that Judas died after betraying Jesus. There are other standards that renders that scenario dubious -- it has a strong fictional flavor to it. But the contradiction itself does not prove the story to be false. It only proves that the gospel writers weren't adverse to making stuff up. What they made up, and what they didn't, is the real question.

HarryStine

Fair enough. This is inconclusive (a "bad" translation would probably be a rough one riddled with grammatical errors, but it usuuall would not be deliberately deceptive) but it's as far as we are probably going to be able to get in the way of facts.

SkyDancer_0202

particularly as it is the CURRENT translations that are being claim as infallible. If the argument is made that the ORIGINALS were really the only ones that were infallible, and that this word or that word was mistranslated (and I see this argument all the time), then they can not also reject that this word or that word is infallible when they are using it to condemn, for instance, homosexuality.

Family Man

Harry,

A "bad" translation wouldn't be deliberately deceptive? Personally, I could accept a few grammatical errors, but even a single deliberate deception would be completely unacceptable. A bad translation is more than just grammatical errors: it is rendering the text in a way that changes the meaning from the original -- like Acts 1:18 from the Vulgate.

Why is it do you think the Church, to it's credit, wanted Jerome to create a new translation? The Old Latin texts were highly inaccurate, and the Vulgate rendition of Acts 1:18 is almost certainly 1) from the Old Latin and 2) deliberately deceptive. The tip-off is that every other translation didn't try to cover up the contradiction. I knew nothing about St. Jerome, the Vulgate, or the Old Latin texts before you kindly brought it up, but I knew that your preferred translation wasn't to be trusted. It didn't take much to confirm my suspicions. Personally, I don't understand why, other than a desire to protect your religious beliefs, do people like you jump to the conclusion that you did.

HarryStine

It can be both: a change of meaning through grammatical errors, but that would not manifest itself in Acts 1:18 that way. To assume deliberate deception strikes of paranoia.
A bit of defense for my person. I wasn't defending my religious beliefs. I'm not a biblical inerrantist. By the same token I didn't jump to any conclusions. I didn't have to. What happened was I read your post and noticed that the contradiction you provided did not exist in the translation I had last seen Acts 1:18 in. I noticed that I might have something to contribute so I contributed it. The defense given by others of my faith is usually, “Luke was relying on a different tradition. He doesn’t have to be right all the time.” It seems that you have jumped to the conclusion that anyone who attempts to re-explain a contradiction is a biblical inerrantist. But we can forget about that as it has nothing to do with the subject matter.

Here’s something more from the preface to my Vulgate:
It seems Acts received better attention than your post suggested. Even if it is close to the Old-Latin it was probably placed under careful scrutiny to root out obvious errors. That doesn’t mean there aren’t errors, but that’s not terribly important because it would not affect my faith if the contradiction existed.

Family Man

Do I sound paranoid to you? When a translation exists that includes some phrasing that, if accurate, would eliminate a contradiction, and it is clear that the additional phrasing is an addition by the translator, then deliberate deception is the obvious explanation. Whoever wrote that translation probably didn't see it that way. He probably thought that it must have happened that way, and wrote it like he thought it happened instead of how it was written. But that's still a deliberate deception. And deliberate deception is a bad translation.

Furthermore, the passage in question can not be a mere grammatical error. It contains additional information that does not exist in any other translation that I'm aware of. This cannot be passed off as a mere slip of the pen. That argument makes no sense.

First, there is nothing wrong with defending your religion. Second, at no point did I ever assume or state that you were an inerrantist (that's your assumption, not mine). I did assume that your unwillingness to consider the oddity of your claim, given all the other the translations that said quite the opposite, was a result of your religious beliefs. I believe that was a reasonable assumption.

If you've read all of my posts, you'll also notice that I also do not believe that contradictions alone are enough to come to the conclusion that the biblical stories are wrong. I believe some are true, but most are wrong, but that conclusion is based on other criteria routinely used by historians. But that's another thread. If you don't believe that the gospel writers would get everything right, then why are you resistant to the notion that some of the translators played fast and loose with the text?

Hmm, it would seem you Catholics need to get your stories straight. According to the American Catholic:

and the Catholic Encyclopedia

Neither source mentions Jerome ever working on Acts. Apparently, he did work on some of the epistles (which I'm presuming that the American Catholic magazine is not counting epistles as books).

I don't mean to be rude, but what is a skeptic to think? Moreover, let's apply a little common sense here. It's clear that Jerome's main interest was translating the Old Testament. He spent most of his adult life working on that. If he was going to foray into the New Testament, isn't it logical that he'd work on the gospels, the heart of the Christian story? I'm sorry, but unless you can explain why these Catholic sources say the direct opposite of what you say the Vulgate says, I see no reason to believe that Jerome ever worked on Acts or that the translation you provided is at all accurate.

Finally, the problem I have with your posts is not personal. The problem I have is that you noticed that the Vulgate translation was odd, that other translations did not include the passage in question, but you didn't think things through. You clearly took a "my religious book says it so it must be correct" attitude, even though logic would indicate a problem, and a quick internet search of Catholic sources indicates a problem. And for me, that's a problem.

Family Man

Oh, heck, one more, from The Columbia Encyclopedia

Again, he worked on the gospels then the Old Testament. He did not appear to have worked on Acts. So can you explain to me why your preface states differently when all these other scholarly sources say otherwise?

aa5874

Family Man, you must remember that the Bible claims that if one does not believe in the Word of God he is subject to Hell Fire, you must also take into account the numerous discrepancies in the Bible. In my opinion, the Bible is irreconcilable, the errors are far too flagrant, the main characters are unverifiable. Only the decieved and those who want to decieve take the Bible seriously.

A detailed study of the book called Matthew will show beyond any doubt that the Bible destroys itself.

Family Man

I don't disagree. It doesn't follow, however, that every claim in the Bible are as ludicrous as the ones you mention. You have to evaluate every claim separately. On the whole, the Bible is hogwash. But it is poor historical analysis to dismiss everything in the Bible just because there are a lot of ridiculousness also.

HarryStine

Jerome probably didn't work on Acts. I've come to accept that. The preface, itself, admits that we don't know who worked on them. All it says is that most books of the New Testament were revised more thoroughly than the Gospels.